Sunday, December 2, 2012

Bangladesh Factory Fire Far Too Common

The day
after Black Friday, America’s shopping showdown filled with door-busting deals,
over 1,700 garment factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, were frantically
trying to find a door out of their factory in order to escape a fire that had
engulfed their building.Over 120 did not make it out and were incinerated or
jumped from the top floors of an eight-story building to their deaths. It was
the only choice they had because there weren’t enough fire escapes to escape
the inferno.

According to news reports, the factory was operated by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a
subsidiary of the Tuba Group, a major Bangladeshi garment exporter that
supplies Walmart, Carrefour, IKEA and other major retailers in the United States and Europe.

The story is all too familiar in Bangladesh: hundreds have died since 2006 in
factories whose working conditions are deplorable and fire prevention measures
are secondary to profits.

In 2001, I did a fire safety project in Bangladesh in the garment factory sector of
their economy. I worked with the AFL-CIOSolidarityCenter to design a program to train
trainers and workers in how to identify fire safety problems and how to safely
escape from their workplaces. We trained workers in Dhaka and Chittagong and formed safety committees inside
their plants.

The day after I got on the ground in Bangladesh, a fire broke out in a factory in
the Mirpur district in Dhaka. The iron gates to the factory were locked and 23 workers,
mostly young women, were crushed to death by workers trying to escape from the
factory.

The factory owners ordered the front gate locked in order to prevent workers
from stealing thread. The factory owners were convicted of negligence and were
fined about $18 U.S. for all the workers killed. No one
went to jail for locking the gates.

In press releases as of this writing from the BGMEA, Bangladesh Garment
Manufacturers’ and Exporters Association, they will stand behind their pledge
to pay families of the deceased workers $1,250 per worker – a pittance for a
lost loved one.

Walmart and every company receiving garments from these factories have been
inside of them and know first hand the working conditions their garments are
made under. They will all condemn the conditions and the actions of the owners
of these factories, but they continue to use them to supply their stores for
their “door busting” everyday prices.

The program we designed and implemented won an International Health and Safety
Award, but people are still dying in these factories. It seems that little has
been done to change the culture of production-at-any-cost even if it costs the
lives of the workers making our clothes. We as consumers must insist that the
clothes we buy not come at the cost of workers’ lives.

> The article above was written by Al LaFrenier and is reprinted from WorkdayMinnesota. Al is a labor activist, was a member of UNITE when the AFL-CIO
requested someone from that union help research and design a fire safety
program and work with the stakeholders on the ground in Bangladesh. He serves
on the Board of Directors for the Labor
World newspaper in Duluth.